Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1521 Shandong Earthquake ([-])

Handelman first saw what an earthquake was like: crumbling buildings, "scarred" roads, lifeless farmland, and "fish ponds" everywhere—well, maybe these places were originally It's not a fish pond.

He also saw a lot of cracks on the ground, some of which had been filled a lot, and some were still deep, looking like a hideous scar on Mother Earth, very scary.In fact, this is not bad, because the land is close to the sea, and some cracks outside Jiaozhou city still gushed up sea water, which caused great obstacles to future agricultural work, because the land was "polluted", and it took time to recover. purify.

The walls of Jiaozhou Fortress still look so majestic.Built ten or 20 years ago—Hendelman can’t remember the exact time—the large-scale fortress city has withstood the test of the earthquake disaster, except for the cracks in the walls of a few buildings in the city. , the main body of this masonry building with a rough and heavy style was not damaged, and most of the soldiers and residents living in it were safe, which shows its sturdiness.

The same goes for forts.The Jiaozhou Fort, which is equipped with more than 40 heavy-duty fortress guns, also suffered minor losses in the earthquake. Except for a few unlucky ones, hundreds of guards on the fort were alive and kicking on the night of the 25th and after more than 20 aftershocks. They are still sticking to the fort, guarding the safety of the huge Jiaozhou City.

There are now many temporary shacks outside the city walls, filled with ragged, disheveled oriental residents.In Hendelman's view, these people are not like the local residents of Jiaozhou, because their clothes are not beautiful, their bodies don't look strong enough (meaning that they are not well nourished), and their facial expressions are even more timid—— Handelman has been to Jiaozhou several times, and the expressions on the faces of the local residents are generally more confident than these people. Of course, the most important thing is that these people still have a braid behind their heads, which is a typical feature of Qing people. !

It seems that the refugees from the Qing Dynasty who fled to Jiaozhou because of the earthquake disaster were just like the victims who ran to the United Provinces to seek asylum with their old and young children every time a war broke out in Germany. They were all poor people.For these people, even Handelman, who has been working in the Far East for many years and whose heart is as hard as a rock, ordered his servants to donate the two barrels of black bread on board.After all, these people are subjects of the East Coast Republic, and they are also civilized people. Civilized people should have the right to be respected.

It has been two or three days since Hendelman came to Jiaozhou City. There were four ships with him, four ships full of Nanyang rice.And their four ships are also the only ones that have been selling grain from Nanyang this year. The prosperous grain trade in previous years has plummeted due to the lack of funds of the people on the east coast and the alleviation of the food crisis. In terms of the supply contract (this year is also the last year), these four ships should not be transporting grain to Jiaozhou this year.

However, after arriving in Jiaozhou, Hendelman keenly discovered that it seems that the grain trade has turned around again, because the people on the east coast have accepted a large number of refugees—this is always puzzling, and Hendelman from the perspective of a businessman Look, I don't understand why the people on the east coast are desperately collecting people in the Far East. You must know that it may take many years for anyone to get back the capital from these refugees.

So the question is, is this batch of investment really profitable?

Well, even if the cost can really be recovered after many years, what about the time cost of this investment?With such a large sum of money, I can think of more than ten different investment methods, and the income of keeping any investment is more than that of transporting people from the Far East.So, Hendelman is convinced that the East Coasters are making a bad investment, wasting huge sums of more than 1000 million dong a year for it, and have been doing so for many years, which is ridiculous, and their trade managers should All hanged from the mast for their astonishing stupidity!

But then again, without the stupidity of these people on the east coast, how could their East India Company make huge profits through grain trade, financial loans, and trade in specialty products such as raw silk and tea?Last year, the East India Company’s dividends reached an unprecedented 240 million dong, at least one-third of which was contributed by people from the east coast, which greatly eased the criticism of the company’s board of directors by minority shareholders in the Amsterdam market.You know, during this period, the company usually only distributes dividends of more than 100 million dong a year, and sometimes only hundreds of thousands of dong, and even uses old spices as dividends to offset accounts, which has caused dissatisfaction among many people.But now it’s better, with the East Coast people taking advantage of them to provide profits, the financial statements of the East India Company look a lot better, so the anger of shareholders has also dropped a lot, it’s so perfect!

But all good things come to an end.Since many grain purchase contracts expired last year (1667) and were not renewed, Batavia has realized that the lucrative grain trade may be gone forever.They were a little disappointed by this, but they did not give up. Therefore, when the last four shipments of grain were delivered to Jiaozhou Port for delivery this year, Hendelman was sent over to act as the envoy of the Governor to see if there was any further in-depth communication with the people on the east coast. Possibility of cooperation——If Hendelman was full of doubts about whether the mission of his trip could be successfully completed when he set off, then after arriving at Jiaozhou Port for two or three days and knowing many things through his own eyes and ears , He is already full of confidence in the mission of his trip: the people on the east coast once again encountered a food crisis, and they will sign a grain purchase agreement with the East India Company again.

In fact, Hendelman's guess was correct. As of today (September 9), the counties under the jurisdiction of the Denglai Pioneering Team have successively received more than 6 disaster victims from the four prefectures of Shan * East and West. It directly swallowed the burden of 10,000+ Qing people in one guard in Changyi, Gaomi, and Lingshan counties.Moreover, although the Denglai area is still some distance away from the epicenter of Tancheng this time, and the disaster it suffered was not that serious, the damage to agricultural production caused by the earthquake and days of torrential rains cannot be underestimated—especially when the disaster is serious , Laizhou Prefecture, where the river system is relatively developed, has greatly affected agricultural production. Although the people on the east coast have taken action to reorganize the farmland, repair water conservancy, and replenish seedlings, a large-scale reduction in grain production this year is inevitable. The entire Laizhou Prefecture will Facing a relatively serious food crisis, and considering that Dengzhou Prefecture has never been a land of grain production, the surplus grain that can be used to support Laizhou is relatively limited. Therefore, this year the Denglai pioneering team faced a serious food shortage and purchased from outside It is inevitable, and the Dutch East India Company is naturally also under consideration.

"The envoy of the Dutch East India Company has been here for more than two days." While Hendelman was thinking about how many grain procurement contracts the people on the east coast would sign with them, Liang Xiangjian, who had just returned from an inspection tour in neighboring Jimo County, was listening The report of the subordinates: "He may have seen the inside story of our need to purchase food. These guys have a very keen sense of smell on the way to do business. This time, I guess they will talk to us about business again."

"Hehe, the Dutch have always had this kind of virtue, so it's not surprising. They want to sell food, and we want to buy food, isn't that just right? There's nothing special about it, just talk to them about the price and payment method, If it doesn’t work, you can continue to raise money from them, anyway, the most important thing is to get enough food at a relatively low cost, that’s the key.” Liang Xiangjian yawned, leaning tiredly on his tiger-skin chair, I'm getting old, and I'm too tired after going out for a walk. It seems that it's time to go back to China to enjoy the happiness. People don't accept it.

The officials below understood what Liang Xiangjian said.At present, people on the east coast want to get food, and the sources are nothing more than a few places, Ningbo, North Korea, Nanyang and the southern princes of the Ming Dynasty.Shun country has too many soldiers to raise, the place is small, and it is still facing military pressure from the Manchu Qing, and the relationship with Nanming is not good. In addition, a large amount of food has been bought by the people on the east coast a few years ago, which will It is still in the stage of refilling the warehouse of combat readiness materials, so there should be no surplus grain to sell, let alone for the time being; as for Zheng's Fujian, Li Chengdong's Guangdong, and Lu Wang in southern Zhejiang, they have never been places where grain is produced, and they may even need other places There is no need to think about importing food, and you can’t get any food from them; and the weather in Ningbo has not been good in the past two years, and it is a little bit reluctant to be self-sufficient in food, let alone exporting food to Denglai, which is almost impossible matter.

Then, after much deliberation, there are only North Korea and Nanyang.As for North Korea, to be honest, it has been squeezed hard in the past few years, such as the large amount of food "donated" by North Korea, the over 60 yuan that the Denglai Pioneering Team owes North Korea so far, and the sending of troops and supplies to North Korea. Helping the east bank to colonize the area on the right bank of the Yalu River, etc., is almost squeezed out of the bone oil, and the North Korean high-level dissatisfaction is certain.Even though the trade between the east coast and North Korea has become more frequent over the years, making the North Korean market somewhat prosperous, but such a large amount of agricultural products are exported to the country, domestic prices are soaring, and the life of the lower class in North Korea is becoming more and more difficult. Therefore, Under such circumstances, squeezing North Korea has become a handicraft that requires careful weighing and careful operation. This is destined not to be too harsh on them for the time being, and eventually they will be forced to live.

"The main thing is to buy grain from the Dutch East India Company. North Korea can also buy a batch. This time, they don't want to donate it. Let them not be afraid. We will pay the agreed price (however, this price is still much lower than the market price. There are a lot of criticisms about this...) purchase, but the purchase of grain needs to be postponed for a while, and the payment cannot be made in a short time, so let’s postpone it first, and pay it together with the previous more than 150 yuan in arrears.” Liang Xiangjian leaned on the large chair Li, said in a slightly hoarse voice: "Buying grain from the Dutch may also require financing. Alas, I already owe 300 million dong in principal and interest, so it doesn't matter if I owe more. Anyway, if there are too many lice, don't be afraid of itching, go ahead with the loan. This A further loan of 8 million dong is acceptable at an annual interest rate of no more than [-]%. It can also bring us [-] tons of grain, which can solve a lot of troubles. Well, [-] tons of grain may not be enough, how about it? Let Wei Boqiu be a villain again, and continue to send people to the coast of Japan to see if he can make some money. If this is not enough, then I have no choice but to continue to use military funds and war horses to trade with Shunguo Well, for these strategic materials, Li Laiheng is still very willing to exchange them, but I don't like their family now, so let's talk about it after pressing it..."

In other words, if only counting the disaster victims from the Fourth West Prefecture who flooded into Laizhou Prefecture, the size of the Denglai Pioneering Team may barely be able to maintain it.But the bad thing is that Lao Liang has too much appetite. This guy who is about to pat his ass and return to the mainland, in the eyes of many people, is no longer rational enough, because he even ordered troops to send ships to Haizhou to search for immigrants. The reason was that the area was very close to Tancheng, the epicenter, and the loss in this earthquake was extremely heavy, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the ground was covered with rubble.Moreover, due to the local geographical climate, after the outbreak of the earthquake disaster, there has been heavy rain. The water levels of Hongze Lake, Luoma Lake, Shuoxiang Lake, Yellow River, Huaihe River, and Guanhe River have all soared, flooding large areas of fertile land, villages and towns, creating Countless victims—in fact, if the people from the East Bank hadn’t made a fuss in Huai’an Mansion back then and moved out 50 people, after the earthquake, the situation in the northern part of Huai’an Mansion near the east of Shandong might have been even worse. Terrible.

For these disaster victims, Liang Xiangjian felt that he had to save them, and that he was "obliged to do so." This made many officials in Denglai sigh, because it was obvious that Denglai had to empty his family to save people!However, Liang Xiangjian is the highest official in the local area and the benefactor of many of them. His orders cannot be disobeyed and must be carried out.Therefore, the navy and the army are busy going to Haizhou, and they are also transferring food, supplies, and resuming production. They are very busy.Up to now, he has to make false claims with the Dutch red hair and borrow a lot of money to buy food. How will he live in the future?The furs, gold, medicinal materials, and whale products from Northeast China, the gold from Denglai, the raw silk and tea from Ningbo will probably all go into the pockets of the Dutch, and the whole of Denglai will be shut down for a few years due to indigestion. Faced with such a mess, what kind of expression will the newly appointed captain of the pioneering team have?If you guess darkly, you should slap the table and scold your mother!

"Go to work, don't stay here. Commander Liao from Heishui may come over later this month, so you should be prepared. If there are no accidents, he will be your immediate boss next year." , You have to assist him in gathering and resettling the victims.” Finally, Liang Xiangjian closed his eyes and said, “This is the last major event in my tenure, and I don’t want it to go to waste. Uncomfortable, I will make him uncomfortable for the rest of his life, that's all, let's go down and get busy, there are still many things to do."

(End of this chapter)